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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Magazine Peer and Self Evaluation

Name: AK Name of Production Team: JMAGS Role in Production Team: Page/Layout Designer Roles of the Other Production Team Members:
JB - Cover Designer
GL -Copy Editor
MS- Editor-in-Chief
SV- Advertising Director

Questions: 1. How do you feel about the title you were given and how well you did your job in this project? Give specific examples of your experience.
I was really happy to take on the role of page/layout designer because I love working with colours and fonts, and I have some experience in this area. I think I carried my job out well because I put a lot of thought and effort into the appearance of our magazine, using appropriate styling for our target audience (parents) and making our magazine look attractive so people would want to read it. Next time, I would assign roles based on skill, because I feel that some people's strengths were not used and some people would have been better suited in different positions. Next time, I would not wait until receiving the copy edited articles to start the designing, and instead I would make a template beforehand to get a head start on my work.

2. How did you contribute to this project? Give at least 2 specific examples.

The first way I contributed to this project was by designing all the article pages. I chose fonts, colours, layouts, and images to create a great look for our publication. In addition, I made the features (table of contents) page and the staff/resources page that appeared at the beginning of the magazine. I also contributed to writing the group article and edited other people's articles for grammar and spelling mistakes. Next time, I would use Photoshop rather than Microsoft Word so that I could have more freedom in the design. Next time, I would not do the front pages as part of my job because I found that I had more work than other members, simply because we divided things by nature of the task/role, not necessarily by the amount of work.

3. How do you feel about the contributions from other members of your group and the division of labour (work) for the project? Be specific to each team member.

I am very happy with the contributions of each group member. Every person did their work on time and with a lot of effort because we all took this project seriously. However, as I mentioned before, I do feel that Gordon and I had more work than some of the other roles. For example, Sal had to choose ten ads for the magazine, while Gordon had to copy edit twelve pages of writing. With that said, everybody did have an important role in creating this magazine and was willing to do all work that was asked of them.

4. When it comes to dealing with differences of opinion within your group:

Our group actually got along very well! If there were ever any differences of opinion between us, they were discussed maturely and we came to a quick conclusion. All the members in our group were easy to work with and we had incredible communication both in class and via the internet.

5. In dealing with group members who were not fulfilling their responsibilities:

All group members fulfilled their responsibilities!

Ratings:

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to remain on task as:

Unsatisfactory/ Fair/ Good/ Excellent

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to be open, respectful, communicative as:

Unsatisfactory/ Fair/ Good/ Excellent

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to use strengths of all our members as:

I would say that our project is very successful! Not only do we have a final product that is appealing and contains informative articles, but we had a successful manner of getting to that point. We really worked well as team, which contributed greatly to why this experience was a positive one. In the end, I truly believe our publication is one that would be well-received by parents and magazine readers because we paid attention to important visual details and we all wrote articles on topics that would be fascinating to parents to learn about as well as provide good insight on teen's media consumption in today's age of technology. Next time, I would have gone with Michelle (editor-in-chief) to print the magazine because some of the pages turned out differently on her computer, which slightly changed our design. Next time, I would not write the group article in separate parts, but rather together, so that the ideas and flow could be a bit more coherent.